Tabi No Monogatari Part 7

Since my last blog, I asked my Tabi Kami (aka my other sock goddess), Dawn, to see if 81 stitches was way too big for my hubby's foot.  Since I know she's used him as a foot model/tester for some of her socks, she'd have a better idea of how many stitches would work.  She recommended 72 stitches (so, this would mean that I should calculate in negative ease).  So ....

Yup, you guessed it .... I ripped out what I did and re-casted 72 stitches. :P  I finished the cuff then hemmed and hawed about how to do the heel part.

So, instead of working on hubby's sock (using the good sock yarn), I went back to my junky yarn (the one I started as my test subject for top-down and found out I couldn't squeeze it over his foot but discovered that it fit my foot fine, if a bit loose) and decided to use that to work out the kinks on how to work a German short row heel from the top down.  The funny thing is, you work the German short row exactly the same way as toe-up!  What does this mean (in English)?  It mean that it doesn't matter if your sock is toe-up or top-down; making the German short row is the same.  Shocking! :)

Then, since I was on a roll, I just decided that I'd just make this sock fit me (sort of) to see how a tabi toe would look like and how to actually make it.  I used Tabi Socks by Andi Smith as a guideline on how to do the toe part.  As I was merrily going round and round for my foot part, I realized 10 rows too late that the foot part was really too wide for my actual foot and that if the width of the foot is too wide, it might throw off my toe!  So, I (suddenly) started decreasing the foot and created small "wings" on the sock. :P Then I polished off the toes! :)  It wasn't nearly as difficult as I thought it was going to be. :)  Here's what it looks like:

See the "wings":

And, here's the catch:

Do you see the hole?!  It's driving me nuts and I should've realized that (especially after learning about holes and closing 'em up while working my German short rows) so, even though it's a one-sided sock (no, I'm not going to make the other half), I think I'm gonna darn in the hole (darning is the yarn version of sewing up a hole, not like that darn/damn thing - even if I was thinking that there's a damn hole! :P).

Funny thing is Hubby initially said that a regular toe was fine, now he's seen the tabi toes, he wants tabi toes now. :P  So, I finished his heel and am now merrily doing the rounds for the foot part.  Then, I'll work on his tabi toes.  Here's how far I've gotten:

More to come! :)